All Along it was a Fever
by Ghostcat3000
Summary: Veronica says, "Wait, don't go." She didn't even hear herself ask, it was so quiet, easy to miss, but he did. He heard her. Prompt fic for the VM Fic Recs tumblr from that moment in the new Veronica Mars movie trailer. One shot. (Originally published on 1/20/2014 on AO3.)


**Rated T for kissing and Veronica's driver-mouth.**

**This story (first published on AO3 on 1/20/14) is a response to a fic prompt posted by VM Fic Recs on Tumblr based on a moment in the Veronica Mars movie preview. The prompt was Veronica says, "Wait, don't go." Logan stops moving towards the door, turns around, and then —**

**Unless I have heretofore undiscovered psychic powers, none of this will happen in the film.**

**This ficlet is not part of the ATG series. I've never done a prompt before so I thought I'd try it.**

**I do not own these characters, they belong to RT.**

**As always, thanks to Blithers for telling me that the plural of passerby is passersby, not passerbys. The New Girl joke is for you. A little Adele. Always.**

**Title comes from Stay by Rihanna which is playing quietly on the radio while Veronica drives.**

**Thanks for reading!**

**UPDATE: I AM NO LONGER PUBLISHING ON DUE TO RATINGS CONCERNS. I WILL CONTINUE UPDATING ON ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN (AO3) UNDER GHOSTCAT.****  
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The air is warm, scented with flowers mixed with a little bit of the ocean, invigorating and salty. As much as she hates this place there is no denying the other feelings, the ones she conveniently forgets because remembering confuses things. Neptune is the villain of the piece, it can't be anything else, not her hair blowing, not the sun on her skin, not home.

A loud commercial jingle on the radio snaps her out of the moment. She turns it off rather than do the station to station skip in a futile search for a song that compliments her state of mind, which is evenly split between the details of the case, the events from last night and their shared 6" tall catalyst. One who is, in his own way, a version of home. Don't think about it, think about the case,_ figure it out_, she admonishes herself under her breath.

The song would have to be a two-parter anyway. Bohemian Rhapsody? Not right. Paradise by the Dashboard Light? Gross. Black Water? _Seriously_? She realizes that she has inadvertently listed some of her dad's favorite songs. She needs to buy him some CDs to break him out of his classic rock Alcatraz, post haste. How about Adele? Everybody likes Adele! Even Piz, who never met a boutique music label run by some failed indie rocker out of his bedroom that he didn't love and praise above all musical things, likes Adele. Piz.

She cared about him, a lot, and they had a lovely life together in New York. A nice life. Too nice. Why did it seem so pale now, why did her skin itch at the thought of returning to it? Had she ever been nice? She had been for the past five years, at least. People said so. She believed them. Veronica Mars, the nicest.

The case. Solve the case.

Red light. She taps her fingers on the steering wheel. What is she missing? What has she forgotten to ask? Why is everyone in Neptune a crook? How monstrous must Mama and Papa Lamb be to produce such winners? She bites her tongue softly in agitation. It's there, somewhere in her prefrontal cortex, she can almost see the thought before it vanishes into tendrils of nothing, taunting her with a smirk. Logan. She swallows and licks her lips, giggling suddenly like Knox Harrington. A cracked, loopy sound tinged with a hint of hysteria. She catches her own eye in the rearview mirror and looks away just as quickly. You can't give yourself a judgemental look and smile back at yourself in response. That's just insanity. The definition of. Perfect.

She turns the radio back on, it's something she doesn't know but slow and inoffensive enough to leave on. Green light, go. Green. Brown. Green. Gold. Brown. Warm. Stop it. Figure it out. Solve the case. Get out of town. Don't think about him again for another nine years. Make it ten, fifteen. _Time will only make him hotter, Veronica._ Shut. Up. You. Don't call him. Erase that old photo from your phone. Erase the number. Get the job. Love Piz. Live the dream. A dream without Logan in it. NO. She says it out loud, yells it, there is no one on the street to hear it, not a passerby.

She fucked up last night.

He stood in front of her in her dad's kitchen, hand rubbing his forehead, as if he had a headache. His voice was firm. It was over, she had to stop investigating. He was afraid he couldn't protect her. More afraid of what could happen to her than what was actually happening to him, which was revealing itself to be a darker, thornier situation than they'd initially assumed. He was sorry he'd asked for her help. But also not sorry because he got to see her. He was afraid… of a lot a things. And now he was paying for his selfishness. Her father was right. He had to walk away. She had to go back to her life. Or something.

Here's the thing… Veronica had stopped _really_ listening around the time he said he wasn't sorry. Because neither was she. Her and him, the two unsorriest people around. That made more sense than anything else that had happened in the last few days. She focused on his lips which he bit anxiously during pauses, the lean contours of his face, his ramrod straight posture, the buttons on his crisp blue shirt, all of these things, new things, new to her. It had been years and people change, simpletons knew this, so why did these new details make her feel so giddy? She was bursting out of her skin with an elation that was a complete mockery of the serious shitstorm that they were in. The incongruity didn't matter though, not in that moment, because Logan Echolls wasn't a boy anymore and he _remembered_ things, about her, about them, things that were important and Veronica felt like screaming. Hitting. Laughing. Crying. Jumping. But she didn't do any of those things. She kept cool, kept her game face on, biting her own lip shut and nodding as she listened to his voice, the rise and the fall of it, the still-familiar sigh he added at the end of his sentences. She'd missed his voice. He leaned forward, breathed in, and mutely, she did the same. He whispered "'Bye, Veronica," kissed her on the forehead quickly, and walked out of the room. She caught her reflection in the window, standing there, alone. Wait. What? She followed him, without thinking, through the doorway, onto the sunporch. She didn't even hear herself ask, it was so quiet, easy to miss, but he did. He heard her.

Logan didn't reply, not in words, but stayed put by the door. Not moving, not running away, even though she was getting closer and closer. He looked wary. Don't be, she'd thought but didn't say. When she was right in front of him, she felt his hand on her hip, the wide spread of his fingers sliding across to the small of her back, a wave coming into the shore. Eyes, brown and dotted with green, gold. It was too dark to see them but she knew their color like she knew that birthmark on his left shoulder or the fact that he ripped out his own braces with pliers when he was 14. They may have changed inside and out but it was the little things, things that would always be just as they were, that they could see in one another, no matter what, that really mattered. He swallowed, closing his eyes as she got up on her toes and kissed the corner of his mouth, briefly and primly. She stayed on her toes, and hooked her arms around his neck, then pressed on, lips on the faint stubble of his cheek, on his chin, where his jaw met his neck, until he gave in, leaning down, opening himself up to her.

Veronica doesn't know how long they kissed, it could've been seconds or minutes and if it hadn't been for a passing car's headlights flashing over them, she wouldn't have stopped. Even then, they didn't step away from one another. Well, she couldn't really since her feet weren't touching the ground, he was holding her up, like it was nothing. She rested her head on his chest, listening to his heart as it raced along with hers. Every sensation amplified in a way it hadn't been moments ago. The rain, which started as mist earlier that day, began to hit the glass hard, at an angle, making it impossible to look out or in. It was only them. And for once the idea of that didn't fill her with anxiety, only a restlessness to get back to it, and stop wasting time.

She needs to tell him that.

Someone honks their horn behind her, making her jump. Veronica recovers in time to turn and yell "Go fuck your mother!", her standard NYC car retort to SUVs and gypsy cabs alike. The '09er in the Lexus looks suitably freaked out and speeds away but not before she notices a big scratch in the back near his tail light, like it had been keyed. The color underneath is white. White underneath black. Jet black. Huh. There is something underneath that she had failed to see…

Suddenly, Veronica has an idea, a small one. It isn't the missing clue but it might lead her to it. She tries to call Logan but gets the loud buzzer of zero connectivity. She tries her dad and it's the same. She looks at her phone, one bar, blinking battery. Shit. She'd forgotten to charge it last night. She doesn't have time to go home, not if she wants to wrap things up. This hunch might be important or it might nothing, that's why it's ahunch and hunches have their own, specific value. Well, her dad always told her to listen to her instinct. She slows down and does a sharp U-turn towards Gia Goodman's, who she suddenly feels, to her bones, was definitely holding out on her the day before. If she's lucky she'll get something she can use. Put her on the right track. Find that exculpatory evidence, solve the case, stay in Neptune, figure things out, kiss the boy. Repeat that last item. Now, that sounds like an ending she could work with.


End file.
